The present invention is directed to absorbent articles and in particular personal care absorbent articles utilized to collect and retain body fluids or exudates including, but not limited to urine, feces and menses. In the context of such products, wearer comfort and absorbency are two main attributes and areas of concern for the wearer. This is particularly true with feminine care products such as sanitary napkins, panty liners and incontinence products.
A common problem with absorbent articles such as sanitary napkins is their tendency to bunch and ride up into the contours of the body including the buttocks and the vagina during use. This is a common complaint amongst users resulting in overall dissatisfaction with the product despite its absorbency capabilities. Most absorbent articles are relatively planar in design prior to being worn, planar being defined as the X-Y plane of the product corresponding to the longitudinal and transverse axes of the product. When placed into the crotch area of a wearer's undergarment, as the products are designed to do, they take on a relatively curved shape in the longitudinal direction (from the front to the back of the undergarment) but it is still desired that the product remain relatively flat and planar in the transverse or lateral direction to maintain wide coverage and permit the product to trap and retain body fluids such as urine and menses. To overcome this problem, a number of designs have been proposed which employ layers and/or overall designs in which there are areas of the layers and/or overall product design where material has been removed. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,514,104 which discloses absorbent articles with one or more V-shaped notches cut at both ends of the pad to supposedly provide an ergonomic fit and to reduce stiffness. U.S. Publication No. 2007/0135788 A1 discloses a panty liner with end notches and side notches located in the product. U.S. Publication No. 2005/0124953 discloses an absorbent article with segmented absorbent pads which are transversely separated by a flexible zone. The flexible zone is said to be minimally absorbent and preferentially deforms before the segmented absorbent pad. Lateral force on the absorbent article compresses the flexible zone and reduces the transverse width of the absorbent article. WO 2008/004961 discloses an absorbent article with a core that has a first region comprising two legs which extend in the longitudinal direction of the article over at least parts of the crotch portion of the article towards the rear portion with a maximum facing distance between the legs in the crotch portion. U.S. Pat. No. 6,740,069 discloses an absorbent article wherein one layer of the absorbent core is split into a first leg and a second leg. WO 2003/059222 discloses an absorbent article which has a second stiffening part element which is arranged in the rear portion of the article and extends part of the way over the crotch portion. The second stiffening part element has a cutout extending from its end edge in the direction towards the crotch portion as a result of which the stiffening element forms legs which are located on both sides of the cutout and are more flexible than the rest of the second part element.
Despite these design attempts, there is still a need for a product which when worn, resists the tendency to bunch or ride up in the vertical or Z-direction of the product relative to the X-Y plane of the product. To reduce this problem, the present invention employs a stabilizing member which allows the product to stay in a more planar configuration, especially in the front and/or rear portions of the product.